


astral

by sgt_jerk



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Astral Projection, Black Paladin Keith (Voltron), Black Paladin Shiro (Voltron), Fluff and Angst, M/M, One Shot, POV Keith (Voltron), Parental Krolia (Voltron), Weird Voltron mind-meld shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-02
Updated: 2018-10-02
Packaged: 2019-07-24 08:44:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16171610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sgt_jerk/pseuds/sgt_jerk
Summary: Keith ponders, Shiro explores, and they both listen closely to a giant, magical robot.Shiro crossed the room to sit down next to him, cross-legged and with one silvery brow quirked at an inquisitive angle. “Can I ask what about?”“It’s probably a dumb question.”“Then I can give you a dumb answer.”Keith laughed lightly, pulling a coherent thought together.“The lions….do they have a heartbeat?”





	astral

The problem with traveling through deep space, Keith figured, was the sense of time. The years Keith had spent with his mother in the Quantum Abyss were long, and deep, and had rolled on endlessly while they’d made a life on the surface of that alien creature. Time, it seemed, had been imbued with a kind of regularity and predictability, intermingled with periods of frenzied activity, of running for shelter, or fighting off some unknown alien creature. But the time spent seemed to go on and on, incessantly.

He had only truly lost track of time when talking to Krolia, when she would regale him with tales of her missions, of her early days in the Blades. The stories were rare, with the rarest of all being when she would talk, hesitatingly, about Keith’s father. More often than not, they’d just sit in silence, and watch the astral bodies above and around them pass by in delicate clumps.

The creature where they made their home breathed, ever so slightly. It took a few weeks to realize that with this breath, came a heartbeat. Keith would lie as still as he could, on his back on the mossy surface of the animal, and wait. If he turned his head at just the right angle, and pressed an ear to the ground, he could hear the heavy shuddering of the creature’s heartbeat, pulsing a slow and regular palpitation underneath them. He wondered if that was what made time move so regularly in the Abyss. Maybe it was easier to keep time to a regular heartbeat.

Maybe that was why time in the Black Lion never seemed to move as it should. It was guided by _Keith’s_ heart, after all, and he had never been able to force it to a steady beat before. Being the Black Paladin certainly hadn’t helped matters. He had thought that he knew what it wanted and then he’d be thrown back into a different direction, pulling him towards another route, another life. Dreaming through questions and forces and urges pulling him in six different directions at once.

Krolia was pushing at some twigs in their fire on a particularly cold evening in the Abyss.

“You were talking in your sleep again, Keith.”

“…Oh.” Keith could feel his face redden. It didn’t seem fair that full-blooded Galra couldn’t blush. “Sorry. I hope I didn’t keep you up.”

“Shiro. That was the name that you were saying.” She tilted her face up to glance at him, yellow eyes gentle with an emotion Keith didn’t have a name for. “Is he in trouble?”

The pit of his stomach clenched in response. “I…I’m not sure.”

“But he’s important to you.” A statement, not a question. His mom poked at the fire, dropping her gaze into the embers.

The right words had struggled and choked in his throat, and fizzled out. _He’s the most important to me. He’s everything to me._

Krolia had shot him an unreadable look. “You were almost screaming. I know dreaming works differently here, but…he must matter outside of this,” she gestured out, beyond camp, towards the space beyond. ”Outside of being the legendary Paladins of Voltron.”

Keith hadn’t been able to do anything but nod back, and stare down at the sticks slowly turning to ash in the fire.

Time slowed then, as it did now, and the floor of the Black Lion was cool and thrumming and if you tilted your head at the right angle against the metal floor plates, you could hear the regular pounding of what sounded suspiciously like a heartbeat. He wondered if the Lion (Shiro’s lion, _his_ lion) was just one giant seashell, and if you held it close enough you’d be able to hear your own heartbeat reflected back at you.

He knew that for the other Paladins, hours on their voyage back to Earth dragged on for what seemed like forever. Even from their spots aboard the separate lions, Keith could sense Pidge’s anxious boredom, Lance’s fidgety-ness, Allura’s nervous energy, Hunk’s tinges of fear. It wasn’t that he didn’t feel for them, it was just that he was grateful. For some time to drag onward steadily, with nothing peeling through the layers of space like some unholy eldritch being chasing after them. The Galra had a way of making even slow travel through relatively empty space seem like a fleeting pleasure. It beat the desperate flip-flop between fighting and being chased. He could feel the side of his cheek growing numb from being pressed against the floor, but the Black Lion’s constant whirring quelled him.

“Keith?” Shiro ducked his head into the cabin where Keith was lain out on the floor. “Are you…?”

Keith sits up with a start, an embarrassed flush crossing his face. “I’m fine, just…thinking.”

Shiro crossed the room to sit down next to him, cross-legged and with one silvery brow quirked at an inquisitive angle. “Can I ask what about?”

“It’s probably a dumb question.”

“Then I can give you a dumb answer.”

Keith laughed lightly, pulling a coherent thought together.

“The lions….do they have a heartbeat?” he blurted out. “I know that they don’t really have hearts or any reason to have them but they seem...I don’t know. More alive than not.”

Shiro ponders for a long moment, resting his fleshy palm flat on the floor. “I don’t see why they couldn’t have them.” He said, with an air of diagnosis. “The Lions are connected to us, more intimately than any of us can know. I suppose if King Alfor didn’t even know what they were fully capable of, why couldn’t they have heartbeats?”

He peers searchingly down at Keith, still on the floor propped up on his elbows. “Can you….hear him? I thought it might’ve just been something that was an effect of my consciousness being lost outside of my own body, but when I was in the astral plane I….I thought I heard a heartbeat.” His eyes grew distant and unfocused. “I couldn’t tell if it was my own or….the other me, or if my body was just trying to remember what being alive was like, but if it was the Black Lion…”

“Hey,” Keith pressed a hand to his forearm. “We can try and hear it, together. If you want.”

Tentatively, Shiro laid down next to him, not three inches away from Keith’s position. He was seized by a powerful urge to lean over and cup a hand to the other man’s jawline. He shifted, and gulped down the feeling as swiftly as he could.

“If you put your ear down, you can hear better.”

“Okay.” Shiro nestled his head to the floor, eyes soundly closed. The pit of Keith’s stomach ached at the sight, and he resisted the urge to keep his own eyes open to watch him.

He concentrates, drawing his mind towards Shiro’s. Time jolts into place as easily as the gears changing on a clock and settles into the regular, pulsing rhythm below them. The blackness behind Keith’s eyes gently gives way to a purple-tinged field. The plane thuds with the beating of the Black Lion’s heart and he searches for the root of the sensation, reaching out his mind. He could grasps what feels like a multi-faceted, crystalline core. As he touches it, the core warps and solidifies, hard angles softening into…. _Shiro._ Shiro, with his eyes closed and silvery hair fluttering above his browline and just as Keith had left him moments before. Shiro exhales and the purple field warps towards him, wrapping the both of them close in the ether.

He couldn’t break the touch even if he wanted to. He doesn’t want to. He falls in, allowing the astral ether to push his body flush to the vision of Shiro. The vision’s eyes flicker open, and Shiro leans down to press his mouth to Keith’s, all-encompassing and softly sweet. Keith grips at the vision’s cheek and at the side of his neck, stomach bunching up with excitement.

In an instant, the field fell away from his mind’s eye, the regular blackness flooding back. Keith awoke with a start, face warm and mouth tingling from _whatever_ the hell that was. Catching his breath, he looked over at Shiro, excitement turning to a nervous tension coursing through him. Shiro was awake too, with eyes open. Lips slightly parted, and looking out of breath entirely.

“Did you-”

“Yes.”

All at once, Keith’s vision was filled with Shiro, rolling over and leaning down over him, mouth dangerously close to his own. There was no air left for Keith to breathe, and Shiro’s eyes were rich and gazing down at him with a look of what felt like devotion. He felt himself forgetting how to blink or speak and Keith couldn’t help it when his lips parted with want.

And suddenly, Shiro’s mouth is on his in such a real and grounded and earthly way that it makes Keith wonder why he would bother with the astral plane at all when he could have Shiro there and _there_ , running his tongue tenderly along his bottom lip. Tasting like mint toothpaste and _home_. The thing clenched in the pit of his stomach burst up into his chest, bathing him with warmth.

He moves in correspondence with him, and they lock into orbit seamlessly, responding to each other easily against the Lion’s still-pulsing floor.

Too soon, Shiro has to break. He takes a shuddering breath, then two more, eyes ducking Keith’s gaze.

“...It was echoing you. The Black Lion.” Shiro let loose a shaky laugh. “It was _always_ you. You, the Black Paladin.” Keith bumps his forehead to his, to steady Shiro or himself or both of them.

“I wasn’t trying to. All I wanted was to keep Voltron alive and to find you.” He breathed deeply, bracing his nose against Shiro’s. “I _needed_ to find you.”

Leaning up and to press his lips to his forehead, Shiro smooths back Keith’s hair from his face, bringing a hand to cradle the back of his head. His fingers rub an absent-minded oval at the nape of his neck.

“Don’t sell yourself short.” Shio grins down at him, and for the first time in what feels like hours Keith notices the blinking lights and buttons that line the walls and ceiling of the Black Lion, their Black Lion. The tiny bulbs halo him in neon blue and for a moment, Keith could swear that they flicker as one, on and off with the thud of his heart in his chest. “You’re good at this. And if you won’t believe it yourself, at least believe him.” Shiro pats the floor next to them casually.

The Black Lion purrs from deep below them. The control lights around them glow brighter, tesselating at the corner of his vision like distant planetary bodies.

 

For now, Keith supposes that he’ll have to believe him.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I intended this as a one-shot but knowing me it'll get extended. No promises. 
> 
>  
> 
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> 
> [catch me on twitter.](http://www.twitter.com/_emnays)  
> [catch me on tumblr.](http://www.emnays.tumblr.com)


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